(New York, August 22, 2005) -- Human Rights Watch has documented the
plight of Uganda’s lost generation of children in a new video, “Night
Commuters: Uganda’s Forgotten Children of War.” A powerful photo essay by Bruno Stevens accompanies the video.

Human Rights Watch takes an unflinching look at the harrowing
conditions of the children’s lives through original footage and
interviews.

The video, narrated by Dennis Haysbert,
spotlights the phenomenon of tens of thousands of children in northern
Uganda who walk miles every day to avoid abduction by rebel troops. The
video shows the children embarking from their villages on long journeys
in search of a safe place to sleep in urban areas.

Human Rights Watch takes an unflinching look at the
harrowing conditions of the children’s lives through original footage
and interviews. The situation in northern Uganda has resulted in a
pervasive climate of fear. Since 1986, 30,000 boys and girls have been
abducted in northern Uganda and forced to become child soldiers and sex
slaves. The group that is responsible for these atrocities, the Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA), has waged war against the Ugandan government for
nearly two decades.

Once abducted by the LRA, children are forced to carry out
raids, beat and kill civilians and kidnap other children if they want
to stay alive. The girls end up sexually violated and physically
abused. They are forced to beat or trample to death other children who
attempt to escape, and are repeatedly told that they will be killed if
they try to run away.

To avoid LRA abduction, every night as many as 40,000
children flee their homes in the countryside to sleep in the relative
safety of towns. They seek refuge overnight at churches, hospitals, bus
stations and temporary shelters before returning home again each
morning.

This video spotlights a society living under the constant
threat of having its children abducted and shows the world that a
crisis that the United Nations has called a “crime against humanity”
can no longer be ignored.